Why I’m cutting when my peers don’t have to.
I’m Ricky Bobby. I’m not a leader of a state university going through tough times, but I have a story.
I’m paid $1,066,000/year. My pension is funded at a rate 50% higher than my employees receive. My $70,000/yr housing allowance, $10,000/yr car allowance, and free clothing, swag, and meals don’t count toward my voluntary but temporary pay cut. A couple years ago I received a 12% pay increase and last year my raise was $75,000. All-in, it’s hardly like I’m getting a cut at all compared to our average employees. I do appreciate your concern.
It’s not just the Covid challenge for us, we still have to make up the $10M+ I spent on boutique consultants. The most notable outcome was an additional expense of rebranding our school — something our community has embraced as enthusiastically as a colonoscopy. Adopting the new tag line has been “awkward and uncomfortable, but we’re told it’s necessary,” said one fan. Well, you not alone ah!
Because I’m a big thinker, I have nearly $300M in construction funds committed to renovating and adding more buildings around my campus. As everyone knows, the “on the line” college trend of the last decade means that as more classes are held over the Internet in the future, you need exponentially more physical space for those students on campus. This is an area we won’t find savings to prevent pay cuts to critical jobs.
Our “faculty” will be exempt from most the cuts. Like in the C-suite, we don’t want to right size their numbers. Having the highest faculty to student ratio in our state shows what a great job we’re doing and in no way should be considered an efficiency measure against our peers. Our faculty are already slightly below market wages, which is why we have nearly twice as many of them per student.
We have at least a dozen employees we pay over $500,000/yr who need our protection during this crisis. I’m proud that a lot of others we pay only $200,000/yr or more won’t be getting cuts either. We structured their contracts a little like mine to ensure prudent business decisions would not have to affect them.
One of the bright spots of my educational institution that I’m most proud of is our sports. This is also not an area we want to think about cutting back right now. We need those reserves in case it’s convenient to pay out more people we fire like the millions we’ve paid out over the last several years. Although game attendance was down and our new football coach hasn’t delivered the results yet, he’ll continue to be one of the highest paid coaches in the NCAA at $3.5M a year.
Of course, everyone loves our basketball coach. We’ve spent many millions upgrading his facilities. He hasn’t achieved that Final Four appearance we’ve been hoping for yet, but he’s an ace recruiter and has provided the NBA with several players. That’s why we helped cover his legal defense from the FBI where he was definitely not on tape talking about paying college players. His $2,500,000/yr contracted paycheck is pretty safe. To our local employees faced with pay cuts and fans who are out of work, you can look forward to watching these heroes on the field and on the court later this year, making the sacrifice for you and your family.
(Also check out our conference streaming app available with TV packages starting at just $39.99/mo. This way you can enjoy your teams outside the house, like while waiting in line at the Food Bank).
As president, I’m good at taking credit for things. But I really don’t like to make hard choices, such as evaluating productivity. So in these tough times, it’s easier to pay some people a full salary to be completely idle while docking the pay of employees that are still 100% occupied. Besides feeling like it makes me more likable, it should help motivate people to find less to do.
It’s really about the little people. If you don’t have any work to do before August (or didn’t have much work to do anyway) and you make less than $45,000/year, I’m going to make sure you get full pay and generous benefits. The great thing is, there is no need to use your vacation time. You can save that for later when we might need you back at work.
I think we can all agree the folks earning $45,000-$80,000 are really the best to shoulder this burden for us. That’s why even before this crisis found my school unprepared to serve students “on the line” from home, we made sure the staff supporting our faculty and sports programs were paid well below market. No 12% raises or housing allowance for these workers!
Doubling down on that theme, I’m granting a 15% reduction in pay for those staffers. Some people in the fake media call it a “furlough”. This is totally untrue. I’m giving them the gift of involuntary vacations without pay. I thank them for their contribution to my success. We’re all in this together.
I have a few other accomplishments you might find interesting:
My pay is in the top 1% of school administrators in the US (in a state with roughly a median cost of living)
We have the highest tuition cost in our state (a 35% increase over the last 5 years).
We have the highest student housing cost.
I helped cut our Net Income in half last year and was likely to have shortfalls this year anyway.
I don’t want to spend any time scrutinizing who decided what or how something got approved. Understanding which poor management decisions were made and by whom, or determining how we got here, doesn’t help me through this.
Going forward, those affected by this crisis can count on me to continue top loading our organization with executives who will focus their energy on rewarding themselves and spending your tuition and tax dollars in new and creative ways. Maybe one day, like a miracle, this will all solve itself.
- Ricky Bobby
